The Doctor’s Tablet takes a creative approach to authorship. The Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s blog enlists members of a 2,000-strong pool of students and graduates—not just communication staffers—to share their perspectives on a range of topics of interest to the school’s core audiences. This combination of voices makes the blog a clear winner in the Best Blog category of PR Daily’s 2015 Nonprofit PR Awards. 

The blog was designed to humanize the Einstein brand by giving a voice and a face to the people behind the brand and to elevate the school’s reputation as a valuable source of information. Little guesswork is involved, since the Department of Communications and Public Affairs regularly surveys readers on the topics they’re interested in, the ease of navigating the blog, and the relevance of the posts published to the blog. 

The blog’s main theme is how doctors use their knowledge, skills, experience, and intuition to teach students, make diagnoses, treat patients, and provide compassionate care. Fresh content—all of it edited, a rarity in the blogosphere—is published twice every week (with posting dates designed to synch up with high-traffic days). Posts are promoted via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, along with the school’s internal communication channels. Einstein uses paid promotion within social networks to boost reach, an increasingly necessary tactic. 

The effort has paid off with dramatic year-over-year readership increases, culminating with a 72 percent increase in 2014 over 2012. More than 60 percent of traffic is the result of an organic search, which means the archive of content is serving Einstein well. 

For its comprehensive strategy resulting in a beautifully executed blog, we’re presenting our Best Blog award to Paul Moniz and David Flores.